Veritula – Meta

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #4105.

This seems both complicated and restrictive.

This seems both complicated and restrictive. People could easily sidestep the restriction anyway: nothing stops someone from leaving a comment with only a single emoji in it.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2458.

I could implement reactions on a per-paragraph basis.

#2458​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

Too complicated/ambitious for a first implementation. Start piecemeal. But could be a promising approach if reactions to ideas as a whole end up being ambiguous (#2166).

  Benjamin Davies revised criticism #4104.

Doesn’t need to be arbitrary emojis, it could just be a handful that you choose, each being a different flavour of acknowledgement.

Thumbs up,
Thinking emoji,
Mind-blown emoji,
Etc.

Doesn’t need to be arbitrary emojis, it could just be a handful that you choose, each being a different flavour of acknowledgement.

Thumbs up,
Thinking emoji,
Mind-blown emoji,
Etc.

Edit: X spaces are an example of a limited set of emojis working well.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2166.

Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.

#2166​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 6 months ago

I can speculate ahead of time, but I might implement reactions and find that this is not an issue after all. And if it is, I can either retire the feature or improve it.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3121.

The Effective Altruism forum has an interesting way to react to posts.

There’s an ‘Agree’ button and a ‘Disagree’ button. Those are apparently anonymous. Then separately, there’s a button to ‘Add a reaction’ of either ‘Heart’, ‘Helpful’, ‘Insightful’, ‘Changed my mind’, or ‘Made me laugh’. And those are apparently not anonymous.

I wonder why they chose to make some reactions anonymous but not others. I don’t think I’d want a ‘Heart’ or ‘Made me laugh’ button, they seem too social-network-y. Also, ‘Heart’ seems like a duplicate of ‘Agree’. But ‘Insightful’ and ‘Changed my mind’ seem epistemologically relevant. Maybe ‘Helpful’, too.

If I did decide to go with ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ buttons, I wouldn’t make them anonymous, though.

#3121​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 4 months ago

This seems both complicated and restrictive.

  Benjamin Davies addressed criticism #2892.

The purpose of the reaction would be to record a kind of agreement or acknowledgment.
That way, Veritula could show ‘pending’ criticisms to users, say – ‘pending’ in the sense that they haven’t responded to those criticisms. So in addition to revising or counter-criticizing, they get a chance to accept a criticism without it remaining in a ‘pending’ state.

Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.

#2892​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

Doesn’t need to be arbitrary emojis, it could just be a handful that you choose, each being a different flavour of acknowledgement.

Thumbs up,
Thinking emoji,
Mind-blown emoji,
Etc.

  Benjamin Davies commented on criticism #4102.

Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.

Maybe it does. Any kind of reaction is a response that turns a criticism from ‘pending’1 to not ‘pending’ anymore.


  1. ‘Acknowledged’ vs ‘unacknowledged’ may be better terminology here, to avoid overlap with the current notion of pending criticisms.)

#4102​·​Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago

I like the acknowledged/unacknowledged idea.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2892.

The purpose of the reaction would be to record a kind of agreement or acknowledgment.
That way, Veritula could show ‘pending’ criticisms to users, say – ‘pending’ in the sense that they haven’t responded to those criticisms. So in addition to revising or counter-criticizing, they get a chance to accept a criticism without it remaining in a ‘pending’ state.

Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.

#2892​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.

Maybe it does. Any kind of reaction is a response that turns a criticism from ‘pending’1 to not ‘pending’ anymore.


  1. ‘Acknowledged’ vs ‘unacknowledged’ may be better terminology here, to avoid overlap with the current notion of pending criticisms.)

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2465.

The way I picture it, as you hover over different paragraphs, a reaction button appears and moves between paragraphs. So it would always be clear that reactions are on specific paragraphs. The user would pick whatever paragraph they most wish to react to.

#2465​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

But this doesn’t address the scenario where someone wants to react to no particular paragraph but the idea as a whole.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #2628.

Feature idea: page at /ideas/:id/guide which shows you an idea and helps you address all pending criticisms one by one, if any. At the end, it shows a message ‘You’re all set!’ or something like that.

#2628​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 months ago

Maybe there could be some type of guide for a user’s ideas generally. It takes him through all of his controversial ideas and let’s him either counter-criticize pending criticisms or revise his ideas, one at a time. And maybe the user could also choose to ‘abandon’ a controversial idea, in which case the guide would not show the idea again (unless maybe there was some new activity on the idea?).

  Dennis Hackethal archived idea #419 along with any revisions.
  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #4056.

Now that there are user profiles (#408), the search page can have an option to filter ideas by user. That way, we can see that user’s uncontroversial ideas, meaning ideas of his that he can rationally hold, and controversial ones, meaning ideas of his that he cannot rationally hold.

#4056​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago

Implemented as of 39c2686.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #4084.

Then people could occasionally check the search page for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.

Then people could occasionally check the search page for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #3059.

Then people could occasionally check the second tab for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.

Then people could occasionally check the search page for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #420. The revision addresses idea #4055.

Now that there are user profiles (#408), each profile can have a tab for unproblematic ideas. Among all the ideas a user has submitted, those are the ones he can rationally hold. And another tab for problematic ideas, ie ideas he has submitted that he cannot rationally hold.

Now that there are user profiles (#408), the search page can have an option to filter ideas by user. That way, we can see that user’s uncontroversial ideas, meaning ideas of his that he can rationally hold, and controversial ones, meaning ideas of his that he cannot rationally hold.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #420.

Now that there are user profiles (#408), each profile can have a tab for unproblematic ideas. Among all the ideas a user has submitted, those are the ones he can rationally hold. And another tab for problematic ideas, ie ideas he has submitted that he cannot rationally hold.

#420​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised over 1 year ago

No need for new tabs. This feature could be integrated with the search page by filtering ideas by user. That page already has filters for problematic vs unproblematic ideas.

  Dennis Hackethal archived idea #2637 along with any revisions.
  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #2645.

Ah, but I can reproduce when I manually make the selection by clicking and dragging to cover the entire quote.

Ah, but I can reproduce when I manually make the selection by clicking and dragging to cover the entire quote (and only the quote, nothing above or below).

  Dennis Hackethal archived idea #2637 along with any revisions.
  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2637.

When copying a box quote from Veritula, the box quote formatting (>) is lost.

#2637​·​Benjamin Davies, 5 months ago

There’s a way to get what you want: if you select some text in an idea before hitting its criticize or comment button, the selected text should always be inserted as a box quote.

Archiving this criticism for now, but if you’re still seeing any issues, let me know and I’ll take another look.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2637.

When copying a box quote from Veritula, the box quote formatting (>) is lost.

#2637​·​Benjamin Davies, 5 months ago

When you copy text for an inline quote, you wouldn’t want the box-quote formatting.

  Dennis Hackethal archived idea #3088 along with any revisions.
  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3088.

Need a search form per discussion.

#3088​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 4 months ago

Done as of 19009b2. Discussions now have a link to search ideas, which points to the search page with that discussion already preselected in a new discussion dropdown.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #2912.

‘Discussions’ are too narrow a term for a collection of ideas. See #2878.

While ideas should always be ‘discussable’, that doesn’t mean everyone who wants to share an idea always wants to start a discussion. Maybe they just want to put some information out there.

#2912​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

Tyler recently wrote to me, in the context of a question he wanted to figure out, “would be good to Veritula this.” Cool seeing ‘Veritula’ used as a verb.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #2914.

‘Thread’

#2914​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 5 months ago

I have found myself using this term naturally, as in ‘starting a thread on Veritula’. I believe I’ve heard others say this, too.